Новинки Одри Маги

1979 rok. Jedna z irlandzkich wysepek.

Anglik Lloyd jest malarzem. Na wyspę przybywa w poszukiwaniu wyjątkowego światła i przestrzeni. Zależy mu na izolacji, tak żeby nic nie zaburzało jego weny.

Francuz Jean-Pierre Masson jest językoznawcą. Na wyspę przybywa, żeby badać dialekt jej mieszkańców. Zależy mu na izolacji, tak żeby nic nie zaburzało wyników jego badań.

Irlandczycy z zainteresowaniem przyglądają się spotkaniu tych dwóch osobowości. Niektórzy dziwią się przybyszom, inni irytują ich nachalną obecnością, a jeszcze inni wiążą z nimi nadzieje na lepsze jutro.
Tymczasem w ogarniętej wojną domową Irlandii dochodzi do eskalacji przemocy i niemal codziennie giną niewinni ludzie.

Audrey Magee odmalowała barwny portret wyspiarskiego życia. Pokazała zarazem, jakie koszty niesie ze sobą imperializm w najróżniejszych – nawet pozornie niewinnych – formach. Kolonia to czuła, ale i pełna szorstkiego humoru powieść, celebrująca piękno i trwałość więzi między ludźmi.

Маленький ирландский остров живет своей жизнью, и ему решительно наплевать, что где-то есть Цивилизация и происходит Прогресс, а по соседству гремит гражданская война. Острову хватает своих радостей и проблем. Но однажды на острове появляются два чужака: английский художник и французский лингвист. Такое соседство мало кто способен снести без моральных потерь, а уж жители маленького острова и подавно. Тем более что в гущу медленного, но верного сползания к развязке оказывается вовлечен едва ли не единственный местный подросток: в очень медлительной местной жизни ему в рекордный срок предстоит пройти все те этапы становления, на которые у…

It is the summer of 1979. An English painter travels to a small island off the west coast of Ireland. Mr. Lloyd takes the last leg by currach, though boats with engines are available and he doesn't much like the sea. He wants the authentic experience, to be changed by this place, to let its quiet and light fill him, give him room to create. He doesn't know that a Frenchman follows close behind. Jean-Pierre Masson has visited the island for many years, studying the language of those who make it their home. He is fiercely protective of their isolation, deems it essential to exploring his theories of language preservation and identity.

But the people who live on this rock--three miles long and half a mile wide--have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken, and what ought to be given in return. Over the summer, each of them--from great-grandmother Bean Uí Fhloinn to widowed Mairéad to fifteen-year-old James, who is determined to avoid the life of a fisherman--will wrestle with their values and desires. Meanwhile, all over Ireland, violence is erupting. And there is blame enough to go around.

An expertly woven portrait of character and place, a stirring investigation into yearning to find one's way, and an unflinchingly political critique of the long, seething cost of imperialism, Audrey Magee's The Colony is a novel that transports, that celebrates beauty and connection, and that reckons with the inevitable ruptures of independence.

From a remarkable new talent in Irish fiction comes a terrifyingly intimate story of a war marriage caught up in the calamity of World War II, a much anticipated debut which has garnered prepublication praise from Colm Toibin, Hugo Hamilton, A.D. Miller, and Chris Cleave.

In a desperate bid to escape the trenches of the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met, in a marriage of convenience that promises ‘honeymoon’ leave for him and a pension for her should he die in the war. With ten days’ leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin and both are surprised by the passion that develops between them.

When Peter returns to the horror of the front, it is only the dream of Katharina that sustains him as he approaches Stalingrad. Back in Berlin, Katharina, goaded on by her desperate and delusional parents, ruthlessly works her way into Nazi high society, wedding herself, her young husband, and her unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina find their simple dream of family cast in tragic light and increasingly hard to hold on to.

Reminiscent of Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, this is an unforgettable novel of marriage, ambition, and the brutality of war, which heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new voice in international fiction.